


Buzzcut Season

by Seefin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, They're all girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:23:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seefin/pseuds/Seefin
Summary: It ends in Wales, beside a lake in the mountains that doesn't always stay where it should.





	1. Harry Potter loves her girlfriends

The last of the horrors that had been lurking in the attic of Grimmauld Place had been banished about half an hour ago, leaving only the more general, non-horror items, of which there weren’t many, along with a lot of dust and approximately one thousand spiders. Ron had been fine, up to a point, just going all stiff and weird every time he saw one, and shuddering occasionally like he wanted to shake his skin off. Then Ginny had let a huge, creeping thing crawl across her bare, freckled arm and he’d gone pale, paler than usual, and swore at her a bit before leaving. Hermione had stayed for a little longer, clambering over the faded furniture with her sleeves rolled up, banishing dead bats and a gold cage and a dull-looking clock that had seemed harmless enough until it had started _whispering_ at them.

Then they’d got to the last corner, sweating and tired, and Ron had stuck his head through the far-away hole in the floor and asked if anyone wanted to go to the shops with him because they needed more milk and he really felt like some scones. Hermione got a sheepish look on her face until Ginny sighed and told her to get lost, except she had said it in a friendly way that had made Hermione smile. Harry didn’t know if she was capable of telling someone to get lost in a way that would make them _pleased_.

So now they were half-lying on a yellow satin sofa, Ginny’s legs resting heavily on Harry’s lap, sneezing occasionally at the dust, and the sunlight slipping in through the dirty dormer windows. Ginny had her hair tied up in a bun on the top of her head, and it was getting loose around her temples, curling against the heat of her forehead.

“What?” she said, shifting on the sofa, nearly slithering right off before she caught herself.

“Nothing,” Harry told her, and looked up into the eaves. She loved the colour of Gin’s hair, which was sometimes weird because it was the same colour as Ron’s, and then she’d see it _glinting in firelight_ or something ridiculous and feel good about it again. “Alright,” she admitted, after a second, “Your hair looks really nice.”

Ginny raised her eyebrows. “Thanks,” she said, sounding amused. “So does yours.”

“Okay,” Harry sighed, shook her head, “except I was actually being serious when I said that yours did.”

“Am I not allowed to like your hair?” Ginny asked seriously, “I really think all I was doing was complimenting your hair.”

Harry raised one hand from where it had been gripped loosely around Ginny’s ankle. “This hair?” she checked, pointing, “This hair on my head, you like _this?_ ”

Ginny laughed, tipping her head back until it thunked on the arm of the sofa, the sound echoing brightly around the room. “Yeah,” she said, widening her eyes, “I guess I’m surprised too.”

Harry had shaved it a couple of weeks ago when Ginny had been in Wales on a summer training camp with the Harpies; sitting in the ladder-back chair in the downstairs bathroom as Hermione had smoothed the electric razor over her skull. She liked it, even though it made her head feel really light all the time, now she wasn’t being weighed down by the mane she’d had before. The coach for the Cannons had liked it too, because sometimes during a game Harry’s hair would get out from her ponytail and she’d have to stop for a second to pull it back in. They’d never _lost_ or anything because of it, but she always used to get disapproving looks from the bench when she’d cut her eyes over to check if anyone had noticed or not.

Harry wriggled her feet where they were trapped in between Ginny’s side and the back of the sofa, the bottom of her white socks dirty with dust and grime from the floor of the attic. Ginny made a disapproving sound and thumped her foot against the inside of Harry’s thigh in retaliation. “No,” she said, “You know that the other day Cho said to me she was thinking of shaving hers because she saw you at that Hufflepuff party we went to and said you looked nice.”

Harry frowned. “What _Hufflepuff party?_ When was that?”

“That one at Susan’s house,” Gin replied absently, digging in the pockets of her jeans for something or other, “Susan… Bones? Weird name, nice girl.”

“I know who Susan Bones is,” Harry told her drily, “She was in my year. And it was hardly a Hufflepuff party if we were there and Cho was there and half the bloody Slytherins were there.”

Ginny scoffed, finally wrestling a lilac lighter out of her pocket, attached with a rubber band to a crumpled joint made with pale pink paper. “ _Slytherins,_ ” she said, then didn’t elaborate. “Do you want to smoke this before Ron gets back and makes us go in the garden?”

“We like Slytherins now,” Harry said, smiling, dislodging Ginny’s feet as she sat up.

Ginny made a face, sticking her tongue out. “I know,” she said, “Whatever, yeah, I know, I just sometimes like saying that because it’s funny. What are you, my _mum?”_

Ginny said that all the time and it was one of the fundamental things that Harry didn’t understand about her, and never knew what to say in response. “No?” she tried.

Ginny glanced over, blinking as she held the lighter to the twisted end of the joint. She raised her eyebrows. “No,” she said, breathing out smoke, “is actually right.”

Harry watched her, her lips as she spoke, her collarbones peeking out of the rumpled shirt she’d put on to clean, scuffed at the elbows where she’d tripped over a dead potted plant, ripped at the shoulder from where she’d caught it on the knife-sharp edge of a possibly-cursed chandelier. Harry felt that this was one of those moments she’d remember for the rest of her life; Ginny looking lovely, both of them tired, happy. Ginny made a weird buzzing sound with her mouth, passed over the joint and a mug she’d conjured up out of somewhere to catch the ash. “Stop staring at me,” she said, “You massive weirdo.”

Harry kept eyeing her, although it was leaning more towards _incredulous_ than it had been a few moments ago, smoke stinging the back of her throat. “I’m not staring, I’m _looking,_ ” she argued, “You look _nice,_ what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”

Ginny made a soft noise and shoved Harry’s shoulder a little, more gently than she was definitely capable of. “Literally stop _looking_ at me like that then, it’s distracting, I _know_ how much you like me and it is deeply unsettling to see it right there on your face.”

“Seriously?” Harry asked fondly, “You are such an oddball, I don’t know what to do with you half the time.”

“Aaaah,” Ginny said, pointing, shoving a bit more. “You’re doing it right now! Stop it, look at what your eyes are doing!”

Harry forced herself to stare at Ginny’s knee, very unsure of what to say. She tapped some ash onto the cold teabag at the bottom of the mug. “I can’t see what my eyes are doing,” she said, although she could very well guess. “What are they doing? Do an imitation.”

“Here,” Ginny said, and made her eyes very soft. She blinked a few times, slowly, and parted her red lips. Harry’s back went warm. It was the way Ginny looked when she’d just woken up on a Sunday and they didn’t have to do anything except go back to sleep, it was the way Ginny looked after she’d been kissed for about three hours in the bathroom of a party, drunk and a little bit in love. Christ.

“Oh,” Harry said, because she could see how getting that look off someone all the time could be a problem. “I’ll try and reign it in a bit,” she offered.

“ _Oh_ ,” Ginny echoed, her eyes widening. She put her hand on the back of Harry’s neck, pulled her close. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said, carefully extricating the joint from between Harry’s fingers and dropping it into the bottom of the mug. Everything had just started to go a tiny bit fuzzy at the corners, when she put her hands on Harry’s waist underneath her old t-shirt. Harry shivered, and kissed the corner of her mouth, and let her weight press Ginny more fully into the soft sofa cushions.

“Is it inconvenient for you,” Harry started, teasing a little bit now, the tips of her fingers brushing right at the edge of Ginny’s bra, “how much I like you?”

“Yes,” Ginny said seriously, her lips against Harry’s cheek. “You have no idea.”

“Does it _distract you_?” Harry asked, laughing, low at the back of her throat.

“You throw me off,” Ginny said. “Do you seriously not know?”

Harry had some idea, yes, but just kissed her for a little while instead of saying that, warmly, taking a good few minutes to move her hand from Ginny’s shoulder down to her sharp hipbone.

“I had something I wanted to tell you,” Ginny said after a bit, her head back, panting faintly. Harry tried not to feel smug, but didn’t quite manage.

“Okay,” she said, pulling away. She spent a few seconds being totally distracted by Ginny’s mouth, which was somehow even redder now than it had been before, and shining faintly.

“Okay,” Ginny repeated, “Okay.” She sighed, then yawned, her eyes fixed on the roof high above their heads. She didn’t look worried, so Harry wasn’t, but she didn’t exactly look happy, either. “I er-- Luna and I slept together,” she said, after a few beats. “The other night, like, two nights ago when I was staying at hers.”

Harry tried for second to understand Ginny’s tone. “You sound _upset_ , I thought you’d been trying with Luna for like, seven _years_ or something?”

Ginny let out a long breath and looked at her steadily. “Try _five_ years,” she corrected. Harry snorted, and didn’t say anything. She pressed her shoulder against Ginny’s, and then decided to rest her head there instead. Ginny shifted closer, until Harry could smell the talcum-powder scent of her deodorant.

“Fine,” Ginny said, giving in. “I don’t know, I felt weird about telling you.”

Harry swallowed. “You know I don’t-- I mean there’s _Malfoy,_ for me, already, so it’s not like this is a problem.”

“Cho,” Ginny said, because Harry knew it was weird for her to think about Malfoy some of the time. “There’s Cho.”

Harry bit the inside of her cheek. There _was_ Cho, yeah, although a lot of the time there wasn’t. Cho was somewhat of a ghostly character in their lives, coming and going seemingly without rhyme or reason, and although she lived with Ginny up in Wales apparently even _there_ she was hard to pin down. Ginny wouldn’t see her for three weeks except for at practice, and then Cho would turn up in the kitchen with a whole week’s worth of shopping like nothing had happened. Harry wouldn’t see her for months at a time, until she would start to worry, until she’d leave Grimmauld Place one morning and find herself being kissed quite ferociously up against the front door. Cho was flighty, and nervous sometimes, shaky, and it made Harry want to catch her for a while and not let go. Cho was something that she and Ginny had in common, but didn’t really _have._

“You and Luna though,” Harry said, “That’s serious.” Cho was-- Cho didn’t really give either of them the _opportunity_ for serious.

“I suppose so,” Ginny agreed, hedging a little. “I wouldn’t say-- it’s not like, _serious,_ it’s not like a _funeral_ or something. But it is, big, I guess.”

After the war, after they both got signed to separate teams and had to move away from one another, they’d thought the best way to be casual and not sad all the time was to date other people sometimes. It had worked for a little while, or the distance had, and then it hadn’t anymore when Harry realised Ginny was one of the people she loved most on the planet and sleeping with someone else probably wasn’t going to lessen that any. It was easy -sometimes _suspiciously_ easy- between the two of them, but Harry knew it wasn’t that way with everyone, and she knew that some people didn’t like the idea that Ginny had-- someone, had _her_.

“Luna knows about us,” Harry said, redundantly, and what she really meant was _Luna knows it’s big between_ us, _right?_

“Luna knows,” Ginny replied, putting her hand on Harry’s shaved head, “I haven’t _spoken_ to her about it or anything, but-- she knows what you and me are like. I don’t think it’ll be a… _thing,_ or anything.”

Harry smiled against her arm, started grinning, some of the time she wondered if other couples had conversations like this as often as she and Ginny did, if they were constantly reassuring each other how invested they were. “Love you,” she said, after a little while of silence, against Ginny’s warm skin, staring at the oak beams in the roof.

Ginny flicked her earlobe. “Yeah,” she said, and she sounded like she was smiling. “Love you too. Obviously.”

 

*

 

Harry arrived late, because the motorcycle had been acting up. She’d had to run to catch the train, still in the fucking _leather jacket_ she’d been wearing, and now felt like an utter prat walking into the pub with it on after she so clearly had not come on a motorcycle.

Pansy Parkinson wolf whistled from where she was perched on a bar stool, long legs crossed at the ankle, long hair tied at the nape of her neck. Harry rolled her eyes and waved halfheartedly. Three men were sat at a table near the door, and they all looked up from their beers to stare at her as she walked past. “What?” she asked, feeling very aggressive after her tube journey. “Can I help you?” This received no reply, which was just as well, she thought, satisfied.

“Potter,” Parkinson said, when Harry arrived, “Your friends are all in the bathroom for some reason.”

“Where’s Malfoy?” Harry asked, “And it’s a fucking _toilet,_ Parkinson, this isn’t your mansion.”

“I know that you’re trying to be scathing,” Parkinson replied, smiling blandly, lovely and lipsticked. “But if your punchline has to depend on the fact that _I live in a mansion,_ then I don’t think it’s a very good one, because I have a mansion.”

Harry didn’t know what to do, she couldn’t argue because she suspected Parkinson was actually _right._ “Where’s Malfoy?” she asked, again, a little more defeated the second time around.

Parkinson raised one cool shoulder, and Harry got the vivid impression that she was being made fun of. “Getting ice,” she said, “ _back in a moment_ , apparently.”

A moment, Harry decided, was not a short enough length of time to have to try and make conversation with Parkinson, so she went to hang out in the girl’s loos instead, where she imagined she would get a friendlier reception.

She _did_ get a friendlier reception, because Ginny was present, applying green eyeliner to Luna’s eyelid with her tongue stuck out. Also, Cho was there, leaning against the sinks and watching interestedly. “Hey,” Harry said, surprised, joining her. Cho immediately stuck her hand into the back pocket of Harry’s cords, and knocked her chin against the top of Harry’s head in greeting.

“With you in a sec,” Ginny mumbled, gesturing over her shoulder with the eyeliner pencil. “Take a seat love.”

Luna smiled at her, radiant and golden. “Hi Harry,” she said, not really taking her eyes off Ginny. “We’ve decided to go clubbing after this, will you come?”

“Ick,” Harry said, shaking her head, “probably not Luna, no.”

“Harry doesn’t like clubs,” Cho elaborated, from high above Harry’s head, before tucking some of her smooth, dark hair behind her ear. “Because she doesn’t like crowds or sweating.”

“Nobody _likes_ sweating,” Harry said, grumbling, then edged a bit closer to Cho, who always made her feel very short, although that wasn’t strictly her fault.

“I think it’s good for you,” Luna said decisively. “You really should come.” She was sitting in the toilet armchair, her hands clasped in her lap, as Ginny leaned half over her and half against the shiny red tiles that ended halfway up the wall. Luna matched them, a little, because she had a pair of very shiny red boots on that Harry would never be able to pull off in a million years. It seemed to be one of Luna’s many and varied skills; matching whatever room she happened to be in at the time.

Ginny poked Luna in the forehead with her pinky finger, and gave her a stern look that Harry didn’t know quite how to interpret. “You don’t have to come, sorry Harry,” Luna amended, after a fraught second, and then twisted to look up at her. “Please don’t feel like you have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Cho chuckled, at that, and Harry just stood there a little bit speechless. She glanced at Ginny, who had a pained expression in her eyes. “Okay Luna,” she soothed, because she didn’t know what else to say. “It’s fine, I’m really not going to.”

Luna deflated, and turned back to nod at Ginny, apparently in approval. Harry got the sense they’d been doing something along the lines of talking about her when she wasn’t there.

“So Wales is really good,” Cho said, after a moment, and Harry laughed.

“Yeah?” she asked, “How are the Harpies?”

“Babe,” Cho said, “You know I can’t tell you that, there’s a confidentiality clause.”

Ginny snapped her head up, “Wait,” she said, “Did the Cannons not make you sign a confidentiality clause?”

“What?” Harry asked, incredulously. “Not for like… general fucking inquiries, they didn’t, not for polite fucking conversation.”

“If someone from an opposing team asks us how the team is, we are not to answer, and we are to cite the confidentiality clause,” Cho said, sounding as though she was quoting from memory.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Harry said, “The Cannons just don’t want me to spill about _plays,_ I don’t think they could care less if I told you I think we’re going to have a great fucking season.”

“No you’re not,” Cho laughed, “Harry the Cannons have never once had a great fucking season.”

“The didn’t ever have _me--_ ” Harry started to say, but then Malfoy popped her head through the door and she forgot how to talk.

“Potter,” she said, ignoring everyone else in the room, as was customary until she’d had a few drinks, “I’m about to go on my break, come and talk to me.” She paused for a second, pursed her lips, and then clearly couldn’t think of anything else to say. The door swung shut behind her with a resounding bang.

“Oh my god,” Harry breathed, as Cho started laughing and extracted her hand out from Harry’s pocket, “Oh my _fucking_ god.”

“It looks nice, I think,” Ginny tried, over the sound of Cho’s deepening laughter.

“She’s copied my fucking _hair,_ ” Harry said, her mouth opened in what was probably a really unattractive way but-- “Oh my fucking _god._ ”

 

*

 

“Oh _hi_ Malfoy,” Harry said, following her out into the gross alley at the back of the pub where guys sometimes pissed if the toilets weren’t working. “We look identical now, I hope that’s what you were going for when you did that.”

“We don’t look identical,” Malfoy said mildly, lighting a cigarette, shivering in her thin cotton t-shirt.

Harry narrowed her eyes. “Other than you’re white _,_ yeah, we kind of do actually. It’s _creepy,_ you’ve made us seem _creepy_.”

“Harry Potter,” Malfoy said, pointing with her cigarette, leaning back against the red brick wall of the building. “You are hardly the first woman in the world to get a buzzcut, nor, I imagine, will you be the last.”

“ _Nor,_ ” Harry scoffed.

Malfoy looked really fucking fit, actually, which Harry thought was hugely unfair. Her eyes looked massive, and her chin seemed a lot less pointy than it had done before, two days ago when Malfoy had had all that fine, white-blonde hair, down to her shoulders. Harry had liked it, the way it moved when Malfoy walked, the way she’d throw it behind her ears impatiently, the way she sometimes used to tie it up before they kissed because she didn’t like how tangled it would get. Harry-- Harry supposed she could get used to this, too, and the way it made Malfoy looked smaller than she really was.

Malfoy smirked, and flicked her eyes down to Harry’s boots, up to the jacket she hadn’t had a chance to take off yet. “Looks better on you,” she allowed, which was maybe the nicest thing Harry had ever heard her say outside of… her _bed_.

“It would,” Harry agreed, somewhat mollified, “I have the face shape for it.”

Malfoy raised one very pale eyebrow. “Listen, if there’s _anything_ my face has, it’s _shape._ ”

“Don’t really know what you mean by that,” Harry replied, eyeing the streetlight at the end of the alley that was glimmering on and off with a whiny buzz. “How long has that been like that?” she asked, nodding at it.

Malfoy ignored her. “Have you heard Britney Spears’ newest song?” she responded, dropping ash onto the cobblestones underneath her trainers and scuffing it in. “It’s all over the radio.”

“What?” Harry asked, feeling like she’d been shocked too many times that night already to have to deal with whatever was happening right now. “Who are you, and _what_ have you done with the Draco Malfoy I know and… like,” she wriggled her shoulders, “ _tolerate_.”

“Know and love,” Malfoy said, yawning boredly, “the phrase is _know and love._ ”

“I know what the fucking phrase is,” Harry told her, finding this whole thing incredibly surreal. “Since when do you know what the radio is?”

“Since we have one behind the bar,” Malfoy told her, a slight frown wrinkling the skin between her eyebrows, “Since _Leo_ told me I have to have it playing during my shift because _nobody wants to sit in silence and be scowled at,_ apparently.”

Harry laughed. Leo was the owner of the bar, and had recently filled the top spot on Malfoy’s list of enemies; the one that had sat vacant for a while after she and Harry had started fucking. He wasn’t the worst person Harry had met, which was a low bar anyway, but sometimes made dirty jokes and had now presumably told Malfoy she was being too mean to customers.

Malfoy sighed, in a long-suffering manner, and reeled Harry in by the slippery sleeve of her coat. “Laughing wouldn’t have been _my_ first reaction to that, Potter,” she said, but she wasn’t serious, and her hand had found the small of Harry’s back, making the coat creak as she ran her palm upwards. Harry watched her grey eyes, and leaned into it when she started scratching through the short hair on the nape of Harry’s neck.

Malfoy had used to seem so… _unattainable,_ to Harry, so far away, with her aloof stare and the way she always held Pansy’s wrist and laughed in her ear and made it seem as though she was laughing at _you._ And she had still been unattainable, flinty-eyed and cool, the day Harry had looked at her and decided she’d quite like for Malfoy to laugh into _her_ ear, actually. So, when Ginny and Cho were in Wales, and Harry had nothing else to do in between matches, she’d come to the pub without them and watch Malfoy pour pints, and be talked to when Malfoy had free time.

Malfoy eating dates out of clingfilm, the ones she’d brought as a snack, and licking her fingers afterwards. Malfoy wearing tailored trousers and a white t-shirt so thin, Harry could see the entire outline of the red bra she always wore. Those things had been painful, and then one day Malfoy had looked up from where she’d been stamping an ice cube into the carpet with her black lace-up trainers, and caught Harry’s eye, and smiled. From then on there was a lot more of Harry being _allowed_ to watch as Malfoy did all of those things, and then also being allowed to make out with her in the alley when she was on break, and being allowed to bring Malfoy back to her house, and her bed, and to have sex with her, and then sleep curled together with the window open.

Harry had realised after a bit that Malfoy _liked_ the idea that people found her cold, _revelled_ in it, sometimes. It didn’t make much sense to Harry -who was the type of person who wanted people to like her, visibly and vividly- but she did enjoy it when Malfoy was mean to other people while she was sitting in Harry’s lap, or holding Harry’s hand. Harry had been trying not to examine that feeling too closely, so still it made her melt when Malfoy snapped at someone on the street with her arm slung heavy over Harry’s shoulders.

“Hey,” Harry said, and pressed her lips against the hinge of Malfoy’s jaw, her knuckles scraping on the rough brick when she pushed Malfoy’s shoulders flat against the wall.

“Hey,” Malfoy agreed, exhaling smoke fast above Harry’s head and throwing the end of her cigarette into one of the metal bins opposite them. She kissed Harry, slowly, seemingly unconcerned about the way she tasted now. Harry pulled back and licked Malfoy’s bottom lip to console herself, because it always tasted like the sugary, violet lip gloss that she would get free with muggle magazines.

Malfoy smiled. “Are you actually pissed off that I shaved my head?”

“I’m pissed off you didn’t let me do it to you,” Harry said, laughing, “and anyway no, Cho was thinking of doing it too so I can hardly be angry at you about it, can I?”

“What about Ginny?” Malfoy asked, “I think if you all had it done then that would really throw people off when you played matches against each other.”

“I mean-- you know we wear _uniforms,_ ” Harry said skeptically, “I don’t think there would be any danger at all of us being mistaken for one another.”

“I meant more--” Malfoy started, then cut off to gesture and think of a word, “psychologically? I suppose?”

“Psychologically,” Harry repeated drily, “really.”

“You know,” Malfoy sighed, and elbowed her a bit in the side. “You’re on different teams, sure, but it’s only _temporary,_ and everyone knows where your true allegiance lies.”

Harry laughed. “We’re our own team.”

“Exactly,” Malfoy replied, her lips curving as she fiddled with the hooped earring on the shell of Harry’s ear.

“You’re on it too,” Harry pointed out, letting her.

“Goodness,” Malfoy said coolly, but her cheeks were flushing. “Could you _be_ any more romantic.”

“Oh _definitely,_ ” Harry assured her, “like, one hundred percent, yes.”

Malfoy yawned again, and dropped her forehead against Harry’s. “I’m tired,” she said, “what time do you finish tonight?”

“What time do-- _you’re_ the one who works here,” Harry reminded her, “I can be finished whenever, the others are going to a club but I’m like… opting out of that one.”

“Ugh,” Malfoy said, “do you want to come over then?”

Harry nodded, and closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of Malfoy’s perfume; the one she got made specially in a shop in Paris, with lavender and amber, the one that smelled like the colour of gold.

“Pansy has a thing for your girlfriend,” Malfoy said, after a second of that.

Harry backed off, but let her grip tighten on Malfoy’s thin wrist. “Which one?” she asked, trying not to smile.

“Don’t be facetious,” Malfoy snapped, then softened, “Ginny.”

Harry shook her head slowly, “So you and Parkinson…?” she started, and then trailed off because she didn’t know what she was asking. She’d thought that Pansy might be for Malfoy the same thing Ginny was for Harry; steady, a constant feature in the landscape, a person impossible to untangle from your life.

“Pansy’s into Quidditch players,” Malfoy said, tilting her head to the side minutely. Harry didn’t even know where to start.

“You’re a Quidditch player,” she said.

“What I _am,_ is too tired for this conversation,” Malfoy contradicted, kissing Harry firmly on the mouth, “let’s pick it up at a later date, or never,” she suggested, after a slight pause.

“Okay,” Harry said, because she’d argued with Malfoy a hundred times, when Malfoy said she was too tall to be a seeker, to no effect, and didn’t see how tonight might be any different.

“Your friends were talking about you earlier,” Malfoy said, because she was nicer now but hadn’t ever learned not to stir up shit.

“Yeah?” Harry asked, doubtful it would be _bad_ or anything, “what did they say?”

“They _said,_ ” Malfoy started, then kissed Harry lightly, as if she’d been distracted, “that you sometimes have a hard time saying no to people.”

“Oh,” Harry managed, because that made a lot of sense. “I don’t think I do.”

“I think you _might,_ ” Malfoy said, wriggling out of Harry’s grip and folding her arms. She leant her head back against the brick before lurching away with a hiss when she realised she didn’t have enough hair now to make that comfortable. Harry wanted to drag her back, but instead just kicked her hard on the ankle.

“I don’t have a problem saying no to people,” she insisted, “I don’t even know where this is coming from.”

Malfoy stared at her, hard, for a couple of seconds, until Harry felt herself start to flush. “Well, I’m now part of a _campaign_ designed to give you the opportunity to not be persuaded into things you don’t want to do.”

“What the fuck does _that mean?_ ” Harry wanted to know.

Malfoy shrugged, deliberately unconcerned, but that didn’t really fool Harry. “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know, I don’t know. I was roped into it by your well-meaning acquaintances.”

“Friends,” Harry corrected, “and don’t pretend they aren’t your friends as well, I really can’t be bothered with it.”

“They’ve invited me to Wales,” Malfoy said, smiling. “They complimented my hair.”

“They like you now that you’re not a total wanker anymore,” Harry informed her.

“I said yes,” Malfoy replied, and grabbed hold of the zipper at the hem of Harry’s jacket, and then made very stern eye contact when she said, “I’m not asking your _permission_ or anything.”

Harry smiled. “It’s not my holiday,” she pointed out, “I’m not in charge, Ginny is, and she can invite whoever she wants.”

“She invited Pansy,” Malfoy smiled, her face lit up in the orange streetlight, prettier than Harry had ever seen her. “Which rendered her speechless for about a full minute, it was marvellous.”

“They live in the mountains,” Harry said, struck suddenly by the idea of it; Malfoy next to her on a twisty path through the fields, forests, Malfoy lying down next to her on the stones beside a rushing stream. “They don’t like Holyhead, so they live on the mainland.”

“The _mountains_ ,” Malfoy repeated, dreamily, almost. “I haven’t seen mountains in _years,_ ” she laughed, relishing it, and Harry was done for.

 

*

 

Harry woke up when Pansy sat on her feet. “Did either of you bring any deodorant?” she asked perkily, “I’d ask Cho but she’s gone off somewhere and I can’t find any in her bag,” she paused for a second, long enough for Malfoy to rouse herself out of sleep, lift her head from beside Harry’s armpit. “She left her dog, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Let it out,” Malfoy said drowsily, sitting up just far enough so that the duvet slipped down to her stomach. Harry was too tired to even pretend she wasn’t staring at her nipples, pale and pink.

“Deodorant,” Pansy demanded, not saying anything when Harry drew her feet sharply up the mattress, in the hopes she might be dislodged. She was not.

“All Potter has is that salt-stick one that you have to get wet,” Malfoy said, lying back down, “the one that smells like body odor before you even put it on.”

“ _Hippie,_ ” Pansy said derisively. Harry was too tired to talk or argue or move her head, but she thought, from the quality of light in the room, that it was about six in the morning.

“It’s in the en-suite,” Malfoy said, waving her hand towards the door and collapsing her head onto Harry’s shoulder. “And let the dog out!” she called belatedly, once Pansy had already vacated the room.

“You let her use my deodorant,” Harry whispered, staring up at the white ceiling, feeling oddly _betrayed._ “What if she hexes it or something?”

“What?” Malfoy asked, kicking the duvet off her feet, “like, to not work? Because I hate to break it you but it might be too late for that.”

“Oh my god do I _smell?”_ Harry asked. Surely Malfoy wouldn’t have been letting her go through life like that.

“No,” Malfoy said, wriggling in closer, tucking her head underneath Harry’s chin. Her new hair was very spiky now that it had grown out a few millimeters. “You’re okay, it’s me, it’s my problem between me and your deodorant, we’ll work it out on our own time.”

“You’re being nonsensical,” Harry told her fondly, and petted her head a little. This was actually her favourite time of day, where Malfoy was concerned; because she was very soft and usually naked and hadn’t really worked up enough energy to be rude yet.

“Bleh,” Malfoy told her, which made Harry grin with her eyes closed.

She was just falling back asleep, enjoying the weight of Malfoy’s legs over hers, their feet tangled in the cold air, when Pansy resurfaced. This time she had a dog with her, and three cups of tea levitating in the air behind her shoulders.

“Fuck it,” Harry said, low and under her breath, when Pansy got into the bed on Draco’s side and the dog jumped up and settled, with its nose cold against Harry’s exposed ankle. “Fuck it.”

“Tea?” Pansy asked.

“Yeah,” Harry sighed, reaching her hand out for it, “Fuck it, why not.”

“What tea?” Malfoy asked, pulling the duvet over her head, and stretching her arms out, making claws with her hands, her shoulders clicking.

“Chai,” Pansy said, taking a delicate sip out of her floral teacup, one Harry had never seen before in her life, and doubted Ginny actually _owned._ She was wearing black, shimmery pyjamas, and was making Harry feel only slightly uncomfortable in the sports bra she’d forgotten to take off the night before and nothing else. Under the duvet, Malfoy slung one arm over her hips and tried to pull her back down.

“Don’t sit up,” she said, muffled, “you’re not wearing underwear.”

Pansy snorted, and Harry felt her face heat. “I was just going to keep that part under the duvet,” she said to the mound of material that covered Malfoy’s body.

“ _That part,_ ” Pansy repeated, declining into full blown laughter, her teacup rattling in its saucer, which actually was giving Harry uncomfortable flashbacks to Umbridge’s office. She shook it off as she felt Malfoy snickering against her thigh.

“Can we just go back to sleep for a bit?” she asked finally, giving up a little, “because I’m too tired for this and I don’t even care about chai tea that much.” Then she grimaced, at herself and her huge mouth, “Sorry, Pansy.”

Pansy sucked on her teeth for a second. “Should I leave?”

“No,” Malfoy said softly, tugging the duvet down to talk, tilting her head back to stare up at Parkinson’s face, “nap with us, Pans, it’s too early.”

Pansy wavered uncertainly, and glanced over at Harry. Harry just lay down, which she thought was probably the fastest way of saying she was okay with it without having to actually _say she was okay with it._ And why _wouldn’t_ she be okay with it, because she’d definitely slept some worse fucking places than in a huge bed, with white sheets and Pansy Parkinson in silk pyjamas. Malfoy made a happy noise and firmed her grip around Harry’s waist.

The next time they woke it was later in the day, and the light streaming in from the window was dandelion yellow where before it had been shallow and white. Ginny was in the doorway, saying something to Malfoy. When Harry opened her eyes she stared for a while at the rock face outside the window, grey and craggy and wet-looking, even though it was a summery sort of day. “...go out,” Ginny was saying, softly, “or I can do porridge and then we can make sandwiches for later, but if you want to go to the café then we’ll have to leave soon.”

“Let’s stay in,” Harry mumbled, warm under the duvet and next to Malfoy’s body.

“You don’t want a fry-up?” Ginny asked, skeptically, and Harry did really have to think hard about it for a few minutes.

“No,” she said eventually “I love when you make porridge.”

“Yes that sounded _very_ sincere,” Malfoy said, and patted her shoulder, “good job.”

“Porridge sounds great, Ginny,” Parkinson piped up from the other side of the bed, which made Harry want to vomit just a little bit.

She closed her eyes, and then Ginny was pushing her over and trying to hand her a blue bowl. She’d put honey on the porridge, and milk, and strawberries, and Harry loved her so much.

“Scoot,” Ginny said, and Harry put her hands over her face.

“I can’t do this,” she said, “can someone give me some underwear to put on so I’m not just fucking _pantsless_?” She looked up at Malfoy, who was spooning porridge into her mouth at high speed, and had no clothes on whatsoever, and seemed very at-ease with the fact that there were four other people in bed with her, watching that happen.

“These alright?” Luna asked from down beside Harry’s suitcase, holding some up, and Harry truly couldn’t care less, just scrabbled her hands in the universal gesture for _give me that right now._

“Did anyone find Cho?” Pansy asked, while Harry struggled under the duvet to get the knickers on and Malfoy laughed at her.

“No,” Luna sighed, perching on the end of the bed and petting the dog; a small, terrier-like thing that always tried to lick everyone’s hands. Cho had got her a year ago or so, from a rescue centre on the island. “She wouldn’t be at the pitch, would she?”

Ginny hummed, squishing herself up next to Harry; all sharp elbows and tickling hair. “I don’t think so,” she said, “But I’m due there at like… seven this evening, so I’ll probably see her anyway, she never misses practice.”

“Are we allowed to come?” Pansy asked, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees in an utterly transparent maneuver that afforded her a far better view of Ginny wearing the vest she slept in. Harry couldn’t even be annoyed at her for it, she felt like doing the same thing a lot of the time.

Ginny cut her eyes to the side, “Harry can’t come,” she said, “Because she’s on another team, but the rest of you could if you wanted.”

Harry knocked her head back against the headboard. “I’ll just… cook dinner or something, then.”

“Don’t worry Potter,” Malfoy said cheerily, and nudged her, “I have no interest whatsoever in watching the Harpies fly around in circles for three hours.”

“Yes you _do,”_ Harry said, to that blatant fucking lie. “You’d _love that._ ”

“Didn’t you know I was rooting for the Cannons this season?” Malfoy asked, pursing her lips. Her face was very pink from where it had been pressed up against Harry’s skin, and there was a gentle pillow-crease crossing right over her cheekbone that Harry wanted to touch.

Ginny sighed. “You’re going to be really disappointed,” she said, and then laughed. “ _I’m contractually obligated to say that,_ ” she gasped, when Harry pulled her hair, “I’m _contractually obligated_ to trash talk members of an opposing team.”

“You should go back into Quidditch,” Luna said, lying down at the foot of the bed, across all of their feet. Nobody said anything for a few seconds.

“I--” Malfoy started, her spoon paused halfway up to her mouth. “I’m too tall to be a seeker, Luna.”

“ _Quidditch is just a_ hobby, _Luna,_ ” Pansy imitated, and then said, very crossly, “please stop being a prat, Draco, because it’s one thing not to play because you don’t want to, but it’s quite another not to play because you feel like you _shouldn’t.”_

Harry started to like Pansy about thirty percent more than she had before. “The pay is… not terrible,” Ginny said. Which was true, and anyway, Harry thought it was probably much better than what Malfoy was making working in a pub that nobody ever went to except them and their friends and a group of old men from down the road who nursed their beers and didn’t tip.

Malfoy stared up at the ceiling, and that was when Harry remembered the time when they were drunk once and Malfoy had said, seriously and sadly, _what if nobody takes me,_ even though she’d already been asked to try out for the Harpies.

“We talk about this too much,” Harry said decidedly, and felt Malfoy lower her head onto Harry’s shoulder. “What do you want to do today?”

Pansy was silent for a while but then perked up a lot when Ginny said they should go swimming in the river nearby, probably at the thought of seeing Ginny in a swimsuit. And eventually they all left to get ready and make a packed lunch and Harry was left in bed with Malfoy and the dog and the sun-warmed sheets. Luna had opened the window a while ago, and the air in the room was crisp and smelled like leaves and icy water. Malfoy kissed Harry’s eyelids, one by one, and put her careful fingers onto Harry’s lips. “The Cannons,” Harry said quietly, “would be grateful for a player like you.”

Malfoy laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “The Cannons already _have_ a seeker.”

“I’m just trying to be nice,” Harry said, laughing as well, listening to Luna and Pansy and Ginny singing in the kitchen, “please don’t take my job.”

“I suppose I _have_ missed the satisfaction that came from beating you all the time,” Malfoy sighed, sprawling away over the mattress, worming her head into the pile of pillows that Ginny had made to sit against earlier.

“As if that ever fucking happened,” Harry replied, following her. She paused, “Saying that though, there _is_ a first time for everything, isn’t there,” and then got elbowed quite hard in the stomach for her troubles.


	2. Pansy Parkinson attends a Quidditch match in late November

Potter had been stopped on eight different occasions to have her hand shaken by strangers in the time it had taken them to walk from the entrance of the stadium up to their seats behind one set of high goalposts. Pansy knew because she had been counting. Potter had seemed uncomfortable about the entire ordeal, although it wasn’t as though Pansy was the type of person who could sense every single one of Harry Potter’s moods, or look at her face and know what she was thinking. Potter used to be far more transparent, when they’d been in school together, and Pansy had always found it quite funny to laugh at all of Potter’s comical expressions, while she was eating breakfast at the Slytherin table and pretending not to be spying.  


Potter’s face used to be able to cycle through every single human emotion that existed, just in the time it took for her to eat a single helping of horrid, vividly coloured beans on toast. Dismay, affection, anger, Potter had them all, the whole set, and Pansy and her friends had cool indifference, and occasionally deep disgust. It used to be fun, being the ones who didn’t feel anything. It used to make Pansy feel powerful and ripe and warm in her chest; hearing people say mean things about her and then smiling as though she liked it, as though she welcomed it. 

Anyway Potter wasn’t like that anymore, she seemed to have got a handle on herself since the war, and school, and befriending Pansy and Draco and then making Draco fall in love with her. She shook hands and put on a bland, half-pleased face, and even though people talked at her it didn’t seem to Pansy as though she was really listening. Only once did Potter let her mask slip, when a woman tried to hug her, and then she’d recoiled like she couldn’t help it and seemed horrified at herself afterwards. Draco had dropped her hand down into the small of Potter’s back after that, over Potter’s ugly denim jacket, and didn’t take it off until they’d reached their seats. 

Pansy didn’t _know_ Quidditch, she wasn’t Draco. And plus, she’d long given up pretending to have an interest in every single thing Draco had an interest in. But she supposed they were good seats because Draco had looked wildly happy when Potter had stopped in their aisle, peering down at the tickets, and then waved them in magnanimously with one hand outstretched in the cold air. Personally, Pansy didn’t even see the appeal. A low thrum of voices echoed through the stands, a wave of anticipatory chatter that she couldn’t really get behind. She estimated that probably about half of the noise was due to the fact that Harry Potter was making a public appearance somewhere that wasn’t a fucking Chudley Cannons press conference, for once in her life. 

Pansy crossed her ankles because there wasn’t room in front of her to cross her legs, and mentally cursed Potter for her insipid hatred of VIP boxes. It was so _boring_ , Pansy thought, the lengthy efforts that Potter went to to try and seem normal, when she simply fucking wasn’t. As if it was so _important_ to sit with the general public. As if the fucking _masses_ had anything to add to this dire experience apart from drowning out the sound of Potter waxing rhapsodic about her new broom. 

“Are all the seats like this?” Pansy asked, and then had to repeat herself twice before Potter managed to catch what she was saying. 

“Yeah?” Potter said, then amended that to, “well, not all of them have such a good view.” 

Pansy sighed deeply, and then tried to seem interested in the what the answer was going to be when she said, “I would have thought that the prime real estate would have been equidistant between the two goalposts, no?”

“No,” Potter laughed, sounding shocked, “no, no no no. Loads of people think that but–” and then she droned on for five whole minutes about _the action all being centred around the posts_. Pansy almost forgot why she’d decided this was going to be a good idea, and then remembered Ginny asking her to come and felt pleased, for about one entire, brilliant second before Potter ruined it. 

“Do you remember the rules?” she asked, sitting back in her seat so that Draco could sprawl forwards with her elbows in Potter’s lap and hear their conversation. Pansy scoffed, and didn’t dignify that with an answer. She’d been attending Quidditch matches with Draco before Potter even knew what a fucking broomstick _was_ , actually. 

“Yes,” she said, “I remember the fucking rules.”

“Do you want something to eat?” Draco asked, as Potter raised her eyebrows and stayed quiet and generally looked as though nothing had ever bothered her in her life, or ever would again. “Harry brought snacks.”

A cheer rose and fell from the other side of the pitch as a team flew out of their tunnel, and Pansy glanced over before immediately losing interest at the flapping blue kit of the Tornadoes. Potter watched them for a little longer, her eyes tracking their movements as they flew overhead in tight formation. Draco tilted her head back as they passed, the crown of her head pressing against Potter’s chest. 

“Snacks,” Pansy echoed apprehensively, and then watched as Potter displaced Draco to open her backpack, and started pulling out those little clear plastic bags with the tiny sliders that she loved so much. Pansy felt very sure in her belief that food packaged in plastic couldn’t possibly be safe for human consumption, but Potter was constantly rustling open a packet of something or other, and _she_ didn’t seem to retain any ill effects from it. 

“I’ve got trail mix,” Potter said, as though she was working herself up to start _listing_. “And date bars, and lemon drizzle cake, and also some…” she cut off to rifle deeper into her bag. What on _earth_ she kept in there, Pansy couldn’t even start to fathom. “Pringles,” Potter said, triumphantly and meaninglessly, brandishing a garishly coloured tube in Pansy’s direction. Draco made a little hum of appreciation that Pansy wanted to forget she’d ever heard. 

Draco was constantly making  _noises_ around Potter, ones of encouragement, or satisfaction, or contentment. Pansy didn’t have a problem with it in principle, but in practice it made her want to smash a vase, or burn an entire house right down to the ground. 

Potter was _fine_ , wasn’t she, because she was quite fit, and not nearly as sanctimonious as Pansy had imagined her to be, and she was _incredibly_ casual about the fact that she’d _killed the Dark Lord,_ which Pansy found utterly fucking ridiculous. Sometimes Potter even seemed _embarrassed_ about it, and Draco would give Pansy one of her best quelling looks and Pansy would be forced to change the subject to something a lot less interesting. 

And then sometimes Potter was the worst person who had ever walked the planet, and Pansy couldn’t think of another person she hated more, and wanted to scream and claw Potter’s throat out. Once she’d had a dream about cutting all of Potter’s lovely, dark, long hair off, and then felt secretly thrilled when Potter had done the fucking thing herself. 

It wasn’t _nice_ , Pansy thought, it wasn’t a _nice feeling_ to watch your best friend rest her head in the lap of someone who’d nearly killed her. And so what if Potter hadn’t _meant it,_ what did that even matter when Draco had been bleeding out on the floor of a grimy bathroom, for _crying_. Pansy sometimes saw them together and wanted to _die_ , or wanted Potter to die, or wanted all of them to fucking die, sick with the memory of Draco in the hospital ward, Draco wincing afterwards, when Pansy had touched her. 

Draco had scars on her stomach, on her breasts, on the tops of her thighs, even a stray one on her left knee; thick and ropy and silvery white. Pansy had seen Draco lift a razor up and over it when she shaved, so she didn’t cut it open again. Occasionally she would think about that and have to sit very still and not move her head, in case she shook something loose and started weeping and didn’t ever stop. Pansy’s worst nightmare was that Potter would somehow think that she was the only one in that relationship who deserved an apology.

Another roar rose, an echo of the first one, when the Harpies flew out and started circling the pitch; green and gold against the overwhelming blue of the Tornadoes fans on the other side of the stadium. Potter leapt out of her seat, along with almost everyone else around them, but Pansy stayed down, eating a handful of currants and almonds and feeling cocooned by people, and more than a little hemmed in. 

“Look,” Potter said, pointing at something Pansy couldn’t see, and leaning against Draco with a wide, happy smile. 

Draco crouched down, spoke past Potter’s knees. “Ginny’s out,” she said, smirking a little, and looking very knowledgeable about nothing at all. Pansy closed her eyes, and listened to the way the clamour in the stands lowered and heightened in a steady ebb and flow. 

Ginny Weasley was a terrible person to be attracted to, because she was going out with Cho Chang, who was the star seeker of the Holyhead Harpies, and Harry Potter, who was Harry Potter. Pansy wasn’t anyone. Pansy was the person who, in a fit of panic, had tried to literally give up Ginny’s girlfriend to the Dark Lord. Pansy thought there probably wasn’t any coming back from that one. Or, sometimes she did, and then sometimes Ginny Weasley would laugh and lean her head on Pansy’s shoulder, or flicker her gaze down to Pansy’s lips as though she wanted to put her mouth on them. Pansy didn’t know what to do with herself when Ginny was around, which was a novel feeling in and of itself, actually. 

“Hey,” Potter said, close enough to her ear that Pansy jumped a bit. Then again, when she opened her eyes, “Hey.” 

“What?” she said, looking up. 

“Come on,” Potter said, smiling broadly, laughing a little, “Gin’s out there.” She nodded in the direction of the goalposts, as if Pansy didn’t know. “You can see her hair.”

Pansy wondered for a second at Harry Potter; an endless surprise, endlessly good-natured and lovely when by all rights she should have been shrivelled up and mean and sad all of the time. Sometimes, times like this, Pansy knew what Draco saw in her, and it didn’t make her upset to think about them together because Potter was so _good_ , such a _good person_ , and loved everything with her entire heart. And Pansy felt in her bones that Draco deserved to be loved by someone like Harry Potter. 

Pansy stood up, and Potter grinned at her and slung an arm heavy around her waist, leaning against her for a second in something like spirited camaraderie. Pansy put up with it, mostly because Draco was staring at them fondly. She peered through the crowds, breathing in the scent of Potter’s perfume and the pumpkin pasties being sold three rows down. There was Cho; the only one on the whole pitch with a buzzcut, low on her broom, and intent in a way she never looked in real life. And Ginny, still holding onto that gorgeous hair of hers that Pansy used to hate, tying it back into a ponytail right at the nape of her neck. Pansy wanted to hold it in her hands, she wanted to wrap it around her wrists, she wanted Ginny to lean over her with her hair loose until it framed her face and blocked out everything else. Pansy took a deep breath, felt Potter squeeze her side, heard the shrill starting whistle, watched Ginny fly, let it out. 


	3. The Quidditch Sisterhood does some light mountaineering

Harry stood up ahead on the dusty path, right where a line of tall pines dropped away and were replaced with dark and leafy rhododendron bushes, just on the very brink of flowering.  Ginny could smell them, thick in the mountain air, spread low over the steep slopes before and behind her. A sudden peal of laughter cut through the sound of the trees, making something leap in Ginny’s stomach, and she watched as Harry stopped in her tracks; bent over at something Cho had said and shaking with it. Munro wriggled around on the floor at her feet, barking and excited and happy like he was laughing with her, kicking up dust under his little paws.

Everyone laughed when Harry did, small children, grown adults, forest animals, even _Malfoy_ sometimes. The first time she had ever heard Malfoy laugh in a way that wasn’t nervous or mean was at a joke Harry had made on the night bus, when they’d all been half asleep and crammed into the long seat at the back and coughing at the smell of the engine. The lights had flickered and everyone had gone silent and it hadn’t felt real, but Malfoy hadn’t even noticed because her face had been buried in Harry’s neck. Ginny sometimes wondered at the things Malfoy had missed because her face was busy being tucked against various parts of Harry’s body, and generally thought that it was probably quite lot, possibly about five percent of her whole life.

“I thought it was supposed to rain all the time in Wales,” Pansy said, raggedly, from a couple of steps behind her, and was staring up at the blue, afternoon sky when Ginny turned to her. She’d pinned her hair back, behind her ears and away from her neck, and her loose t-shirt was slipping down off one tanned shoulder, crumpled and a little bit damp with sweat. Ginny swallowed, watched the long line of Pansy’s throat, the underside of her chin.

“It usually does,” she admitted, fixing her eyes on the white, wispy clouds hovering above the treeline. “I have no idea where this weather came from.”

“I signed up for rain,” Pansy said, and plucked her t-shirt away from her skin, exposing the complicated straps of a lavender sports bra. Ginny had to look away. “I was prepared for rain, wind, possibly a storm or two…” She trailed off to pant despondently for a moment.

“It’s literally right around the corner,” Ginny offered, “we’ll be there in five minutes.”

“How long?” Malfoy shouted, from way back down the path, in the shade where the pines were thicker, “Ginevra, Weasley, how long?” She’d stopped with Luna to help her collect some nettles, holding open a canvas bag warily, and at arm’s length, as Luna levitated them in leaf by leaf.

“Five minutes,” Ginny called back, then, quieter, just as a test, “how did you even fucking hear me?”

“I have excellent senses,” Malfoy shouted. “It’s all the inbreeding.”

“She’s doing that fucking charm,” Pansy said, rolling her eyes, “we used it in school when we wanted to spy on people.”

“Fuck off Parkinson _,_ ” Malfoy called, “nobody likes a tattle tale.”

“Well isn’t that just the height of hypocrisy,” Pansy mused, laughing brightly when Malfoy made a muffled hurt noise that they only just caught.

“Come on,” Ginny said, trying to be encouraging, “literally five mins, and then we can swim.”

Pansy’s eyes went all sparkly at the suggestion, and she rolled her shoulders a couple of times before setting off at a pretty fast clip. She had very long legs, which Ginny had noticed thanks to Pansy’s ongoing love affair with tiny shorts. Ginny was-- she wasn’t complaining about it.

Harry had collapsed into a patch of springy, purple heather when Ginny and Pansy turned up at the lake where the path ended, clouds reflected onto its dark, shining surface. Her chest was heaving after the steep walk, her eyelids closed and her mouth parted. She looked so young; she looked younger and younger with every day that passed since the war, almost her actual age. Ginny piled on top of her because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, dropping her backpack on the floor and tangling their limbs together. Harry laughed and struggled for a few seconds before giving up and going limp.

“What?” she asked, “what do you want?”

“Nothing,” Ginny told her, and then squeezed her arms as tight as she could around Harry’s waist. She smelled like the furze underneath her back, and deodorant, and hot skin, and Ginny kissed her neck briefly before getting up. Harry was smiling.

“We should set up the tent,” Pansy said coolly, and was staring determinedly in the other direction when Ginny turned to agree. “And then I was promised swimming.” She’d crossed her arms, and her fingers were twitching against her biceps restlessly.

“There’s nothing like swimming outdoors, nothing like a good lake,” Harry sighed, arranging her arms behind her head and crossing her ankles, very satisfied with herself and with her life and at the day.

“You’re such a wanker,” Ginny told her, “stop _lounging_ and help with the tent.”

“I found a spot!” Cho called, from about a mile away in a patch of bright sunlight, and suddenly Ginny felt tired where before she hadn’t, and all she wanted to do was to lie down with Harry and Pansy and go to sleep for a few hours in a patch of warm grass.

“Too far!” she shouted back, holding her hands around her mouth. “I can’t walk all that way!”

“Apparate,” Cho suggested, and Harry snorted and rolled over, staying very still for a few seconds before heaving herself up with a groan. She picked Ginny’s backpack off the ground and dusted it off.  
“I don’t have the energy to apparate,” Pansy moaned, “please Merlin what’s wrong with right here?”

“Well,” Harry started, looking around to assess, “it’s a bit wet, isn’t it.”

Pansy made a noncommittal sound, and sat down beside Ginny’s feet, which Harry apparently took as an invitation because she then lay down again, and Ginny joined them both, a little thankful for the excuse to rest for a while.

The downside, Ginny thought, while she arranged her feet in Pansy’s lap, of knowing about a small and secret lake at the top of a mountain where nobody ever came, was that there inevitably had to be some downsides. The issue with this particular lake was that it sometimes had trouble staying where it was supposed to, and bled out into its surroundings, making everything murky and soggy for a good, wide perimeter before the ground became firm again. They were safe at the moment on the huge bed of heather, and the path was alright, growing tall with grass, but then the rushes started, and the boggy earth, before cutting away to expose hard, grey rock and the glassy surface of the still water.

Eventually Malfoy and Luna rocked up, dusty and stung, and they all made the executive decision to trudge over to slightly higher ground, where Cho had sat down with Munro and was letting him drink water from her cupped hands. The short grass was soft and bright green and perfect for their single tent with the undetectable extension on it. Harry never said anything, but Ginny knew it was the one she had used when she’d been out in the wilderness with Ron and Hermione, searching for Horcruxes. Occasionally she got this horrible _fond_ look on her face when she went through the canvas door, which terrified Ginny to no fucking end, even though it wasn’t exactly as though she wanted Harry to be scared of it or anything. She wondered if Malfoy knew, and then suspected that if Malfoy knew then she would have burned the thing to the ground, or something else incredibly dramatic and ridiculous.

The sun was setting when Luna and Cho started making dinner, on the campfire Harry had built a few feet from the door of the tent with a steady and practiced confidence. It scared Ginny that Harry would pull these skills out of nowhere, as if it were no big deal. As if she’d learned them on some fucking sleepaway camp like the ones Ginny had gone to, in the summers when she’d been growing up. She talked the same way, fine and normal and then once in a while something truly awful would come out, and she’d just… laugh about it, while Ginny would sit there in horrified silence. Ginny wanted to bring Harry very close to her, never wanted to let her out of her sight, wanted to make sure she was loved for the rest of her life. And then sometimes she had the horrible urge to shake her apart, force her to look at herself, say _this isn’t normal, the things you had to do weren’t normal_.

“Hey,” Pansy said, putting her hand on Ginny’s shoulder as she watched Harry stuff nettles into a dull, copper saucepan and laugh with Malfoy. Ginny tilted her head back.

“Hey,” she replied, “did you want to go swimming?”

*

“Are you jealous of them?” Pansy asked, one foot in the water, in a way that made Ginny think she’d been wanting to ask for a while.

“Of who?” Ginny said, buying herself some time. She slid herself into the lake slowly, wincing at the freezing cold, catching her foot on a shelf of rock.

Pansy laughed. “Come on,” she said, just standing there, “you know who.”

“No,” Ginny told her, more forcefully than she’d initially meant, “I’m not jealous. Are _you_ jealous?”

“Sometimes,” Pansy admitted with a shrug, shivering in her black swimsuit, goosebumps rising on her arms. Ginny didn’t know what to say, she hadn’t thought that the answer would be yes, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked. She never knew what Pansy was thinking, what went on inside that head of hers.

“What’s going on?” Ginny asked her, because she was sick of this fucking conversation and she didn’t know if Pansy was trying to be mean to her or not.

“I’m just wondering,” Pansy said, sitting down and putting her legs underneath the surface. They were broken by the water, dyed orange in the light of the sunset over her shoulders. “You seem as though you are, sometimes, it’s not a big deal.”

“I’m not,” Ginny told her again, “I’m seriously not, I want Harry to be happy.”

“And what about you,” Pansy said, as if she was making some great big _point._ Some _statement._ As though Harry and Ginny’s levels of happiness weren’t tangled together, as if they were separate.

“I want myself to be happy also,” Ginny told her, slowly, “Harry wants me to be happy. If something wasn’t working then we would talk about it.” She didn’t say _it’s none of your business._

Pansy raised her eyebrows, as though the very idea was foreign to her. “Is she jealous of you, do you think.”

“It’s none of your business,” Ginny said, before she could think. Pansy snapped her head backwards, more shocked than Ginny thought she had any right to be.

“I’m not trying to--” she started, and then she was cut off when Harry screamed, and Ginny’s stomach curled in on itself.

“Oh my god,” Harry said, shrill and high, laughing now as she ran down to the edge of the water with Cho chasing her, “I didn’t mean--” She screamed again when Cho caught her arm, high and happy, like she’d never screamed for any other reason in her life.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Pansy snapped, twisting her neck to glare at them. Malfoy stalked over with her hands in the pockets of the cardigan she was wearing, rolling her eyes.

“Harry dropped Cho’s phone in the soup,” she informed them. She was wearing _wellington boots._ Ginny could hardly believe her eyes. “On purpose,” she added.

“I’m expecting a phone call,” Cho moaned, “why do you hate me?”

“It’s fine,” Luna shouted, from beside the tent, she was waving the phone over her head like a beacon, “I did a drying charm. Cho! It’s fine! Come back!”

Harry cackled. “It was an accident,” she said breathlessly, backing away from Cho, hands raised, “honest.”

“I’m going to push you in the lake now,” Cho warned, “and after that we’re going to be even.”

“This is the best day of my life,” Malfoy decided, when Cho did exactly that before stalking off, and Harry was left floundering in the water with her middle finger raised.

“Get in,” Ginny suggested, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, dancing her shoulders around, “it’s _so_ warm, Malfoy.”

“It is actually fucking freezing _,_ ” Harry said, enunciating sharply, splashing her way over, wrestling a sopping t-shirt over her head. “Am I wearing a bra?” she asked, when it was already half off.

“Yes,” Malfoy told her, and took of her cardigan, folding it carefully on the dry rock under her feet, “it’s nice, too.”

“Oh good,” Harry said, throwing the t-shirt in Malfoy’s direction, pulling a face when it missed by about a mile.

Pansy stood up, suddenly. “We were actually having a fucking conversation,” she said tightly, and abandoned them all there, gawking after her.

“What did you do?” Malfoy asked, and she was talking to Ginny.

“Literally nothing,” Ginny replied, watching Pansy walk away through the marshy reeds.

“Maybe you should like, follow her?” Harry suggested, grabbing Malfoy by the ankle and tugging. Malfoy shook her off.

“Yes,” she said, “do that, Ginny, I want to murder Potter in private.”

“As if you would,” Ginny said, because the very idea was so patently fucking ridiculous. “You’d be lost without her.”

Harry crowed as Ginny hauled herself out of the water. “Lost without me,” she echoed, “Malfoy, that girl has you down to a fucking T.”

“Thanks Ginevra, honestly, that’s so appreciated, I thought we were on the same side,” Malfoy said, but Ginny wasn’t listening.

“Hey,” she called, and Pansy stopped walking. “Pansy,” she said, “wait,” as she made her way over the uneven ground, mud squelching in between her toes. The air smelled boggy and wet, heavy with water and the evening dew.

“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” Pansy said, crossing her arms over her chest. Her hair was sopping, dripping down her shoulders. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“With--” Ginny started, and then stopped for a second. “With what?”

Pansy stepped closer, and Ginny became very aware of the fact that she was wearing a fucking bikini. She wanted to mirror Pansy, to cover herself, but resolutely didn’t. “I’m just trying to understand,” Pansy said, “because I don’t know how you can all do it.”

“Do what,” Ginny said, quietly starting to shake. She’d left her wand in the tent.

“You make it seem easy,” Pansy said, her whole self softening, her shoulders slumping. The sky was getting darker, Ginny could hear Malfoy and Harry laughing behind her, their voices muffled by the water.

“Make what seem easy.”

Pansy took a deep breath. “This is going to sound--” she shook her head, “I don’t think I’ve liked _one_ person the same way you like Luna and Cho and Potter.” She cut off, looked lost for words for a few moments, “I don’t know how you aren’t just… spreading yourself thin.”

Ginny didn’t know how to articulate the way that being in love made her feel, it wasn’t anything like Pansy was imagining. It didn’t… empty her. Ginny’s love wasn’t a finite resource.

“You love Malfoy,” she said, and then when Pansy nodded, “I don’t know, does that feel like you’re giving something up?”

“Sometimes,” Pansy said, tilting her head to the side, “very occasionally, yes.”

Ginny wanted to kiss her. She wanted to put her hands on Pansy’s waist, she wanted to lick the water off her shoulders. “She loves you,” she said instead.

“Not like she loves Potter,” Pansy replied.

“It’s Harry,” Ginny said helplessly, shaking her head, trying to explain that-- Harry just-- made you feel that way, like you couldn’t possibly love anyone more. “I don’t think you can do anything about that.”

“I don’t _want_ to do anything about that,” Pansy snapped, and took a step back, splashing water over her calves, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

Ginny let it go, then, because Pansy seemed sad and slightly angry and Ginny didn’t know what to say to make that better. She waited until later that night to kiss her, on the sofa once everyone else had gone to sleep, when Cho was outside making another mysterious phone call. She put her arms around Pansy’s waist, then her hands in Pansy’s still-damp hair, restless, and kissed Pansy’s soft lips.

“What are you doing?” Pansy whispered, pushing Ginny back against the cushions, straddling her hips with her long legs. Ginny arched her back, to kiss her again.

“What are _you_ doing?” she responded after a while, Pansy’s hands on her skin, roaming underneath her jumper.

“I have no idea,” Pansy said, low and conspiratorial, and laughed, “do I seem like I know what I’m doing here?”

Ginny tilted her head back, lifted her arms so that Pansy could take off her t-shirt, “Merlin,” she sighed, “ _kind of, yeah._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://seefin.tumblr.com) lads


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